100 Book Challenge—Book #15 The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
100 Book Challenge—Book #15 The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
I had meant to read The Great Divorce for some time, and after prodding from our professor, Dr. Cavadini, this summer, I thought I might as well. My dad bought it for me for Christmas a couple years ago and I just hadn’t taken the time to read it yet.
The book is about Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory and, like Lewis’ ideas about the afterlife portrayed in The Chronicles of Narnia, the image of death and of God is unlike traditional theology, yet so fitting and so good. I love it.
If you haven’t read it yet and would like a nice, short read, go for it! It’s lovely language, as always for Lewis.
100 Book Challenge—Book #8: Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
100 Book Challenge—Book #8: Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write about this book. My list of “to blog” things has gotten so long, I knew I just couldn’t put it off anymore.
I finished this book at the end of February, and now it’s almost a month later. I wish I could say that I took this long because I’ve been thinking it over, but really I have just been avoiding it. In many ways, this book hit me a little too close to home and reminded me of a relationship in my life that has more or less blown up… similar to Orual and Psyche’s, only Orual is actually right in this case.
At any rate, it’s a well written, thought provoking book (could we expect anything else from Jack?).
Another reason that I had difficulty with the novel is that the gods are the bad guys (or so it seems), which is completely against my life! But it’s a great story on sin and forgiveness and the way in which our own egos can cause us to fall. Then again, that’s what Tolkien would say every story is about… but I digress.
I recommend this book highly, and if you do read it and discover a deeper meaning, please send me your thoughts! I think this book would be good for discussion.
100 Book Challenge—Book #3: Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis
100 Book Challenge—Book #3: Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis
Since I first began as a philology major at the University of Dallas, people have been telling me I need to read Lewis’ Space Trilogy, which features a philologist (based on my own dear John Ronald Reuel Tolkien) as the main character. I, of course, wanted to read the book, but as a philology major (and later a philology major in exile), I never had the time. Deacon Mike Brooks, my high school youth minister and mentor, insisted that I read it. Daddy bought it for me for Christmas in 2010, but I didn’t get a chance to crack it open until Christmas break 2011. Then, I accidentally left it at home when I came back to Indy and I couldn’t finish it until Hannah brought it to me on my birthday (thanks, Han, you’re a life saver!).
Of course, I loved it. I mean, how could I not love something Lewis wrote? I especially enjoyed the philological ramblings and I seriously would love to know more about the language on Malacandra. Lewis’ language for the book, Old Solar, was fun, though not as complex as the ones Tolkien derived for his world (although, I’m not an expert in Old Solar, so maybe it is. It’s curiously like Latin in its grammar, particularly its pluralization).
Yet, in addition to my own language-geekness, I dearly loved the myth and the story. There was a sort of implicit, not exactly spoken but talked around, explanation of original sin that reminds me greatly of what one finds in The Silmarillion. And when I came to the end and discovered that the “silent planet” was in fact our own, it was quite a revelation.
Lewis did not disappoint me in this one. It’s easy enough to read and enjoyable. I highly recommend it.